University of Pittsburgh Becomes First Institution to Adopt Plum Analytics to Provide Metrics for Research Output

Philadelphia — June 19, 2012 – Plum Analytics today announced that the University of Pittsburgh Library System (ULS) is adopting Plum to provide aggregated open metrics for the university’s research output. Plum is delivering a directory of researchers for Pitt that correlates usage and interaction metrics from an ever-growing list of Open Access sources, social networks, data repositories, and many other forms of scholarly communication.

“Plum Analytics gives us a useful tool for the ULS to support researchers in a way that adds real value,” said Rush Miller, University Librarian and Director. “In addition we expect Plum to enhance the value proposition of the Open Access initiative here at Pitt by providing new and current impact metrics for research that is made more accessible.”

The Plum Research Directory models the affiliations and research outputs of researchers in a flexible, extensible manner. Plum maps who follows or engages with the researcher and/or their work. Plum then mines the web, social networks, and university-hosted data repositories to collect and calculate metrics about the usage of each artifact. Plum’s Researcher Graph utilizes RDF, the same data model that underlies the semantic web.
Plum works together with institutions to help drive the metrics that matter in determining what repositories and promotional methods work best for dissemination and interaction with their research output. Individual researchers can also use Plum to showcase their impact beyond traditional citation metrics.

“We are very pleased that a prestigious institution such as the University of Pittsburgh has chosen to work with Plum on this emerging area of measuring research impact,” said Andrea Michalek, co-founder of Plum Analytics. “We look forward to the exciting discoveries of analysis when these new metrics are available to institutions.”

About The ULS

The University of Pittsburgh Library System (ULS) is the 22nd largest academic library system in North America. Under the administration of the Hillman University Librarian and Director, it includes 15 libraries and holds more than 6.4 million volumes, world specialized collections and major foreign language materials from around the world. The ULS offers state-of-the-art facilities and services, including innovative digital library collections and services and a robust Open Access publishing program. For more information about the University of Pittsburgh Library System, visit http://www.library.pitt.edu.

About Plum Analytics

Founded by industry veterans Andrea Michalek and Mike Buschman, Plum Analytics is a startup company that is bringing the budding field of alternative metrics (or altmetrics) to practical use for research institutions and individual researchers alike. Plum is headquartered in Philadelphia and Seattle. For more information about Plum Analytics, visit http://www.plumanalytics.com.